“We don’t have a problem with stolen F350s. I believe strongly we have a drug problem and all those other things are peripheral crimes,” said Cold Lake Sgt. Ryan Howrish at Friday’s rural crime forum in Bonnyville. “When you get to know the criminals, you get a better picture of that.”

Over 100 people filled the Bonnyville Senior Citizens’ Drop-In Centre for the forum last Friday. Many of those in attendance had been victimized by property crime.

Howrish, who has spent his career working in Northeastern Alberta, has watched methamphetamine become a growing problem.

When Howrish first found meth on a person, he didn’t even know what it was, but now he sees it regularly in the Lakeland area.

“We have meth dealers,” said Howrish. “And now we have meth users. . . and the property crimes that come with it.”

Howrish and his counterpart in Bonnyville Sgt. Sarah Parke said only a small handful of people are committing most of the Lakeland’s property crimes.

“We have a homeless person in Cold Lake that has a huge meth addiction problem,” Howrish said. “He’s committing crimes. He’s stealing. He’s committing B&Es out of necessity. He could commit 20 crimes trying to raise money to support his habit before we catch up to him.”

Howrish said those arrested for property crimes don’t belong in jail and so the man is released, and his pattern of theft starts over.

No one on the 18-person panel, mostly made up of politicians and neighbourhood crime watch leaders, offered any solutions on how to deal with Lakeland’s addictions issues, as a local social worker, Trevor Letondre, pointed out during the question and answer period.

He said agencies like the FCSS, the crisis centre, the John Howard Society have programs that deal with these kinds of issues before they happen.

“We’re all looking at it after the fact,” Letondre said in his criticism of the panel. “The focus needs to be done prior to it (crime) happening . . . these programs that we run are proven to work with high statistical numbers.”

No frontline addictions workers were invited to participate on the panel, except for the Dr. Margaret Savage Crisis Centre and Victim Services.

There was no one present from Addictions Services, an organization that assists with community counselling services to those working to overcome problems associated with alcohol, drugs and gambling.

Also missing from the panel was a representative from the 2nd Floor Women’s Recovery Centre, a residential substance use treatment program in downtown Cold Lake.

Leah Ferris, the executive directive of Cold Lake’s John Howard Society, also wasn’t there, even though the organization is focused on addressing the problem of crime and prevention.

Ferris is actively working on a study to identify exactly how many homeless are in the Cold Lake area.

The local John Howard is also working towards building a 10-bed all-male homeless shelter that would work with residents to provide life skills that would provide them the ability to transition into their own home.

The society also plans to deliver programming, such as Stoplifting to assist with those who have a habit of stealing to support addictions.

The politicians on the panel touted a tough on crime approach, and MLA Scott Cyr asked people to email him stories of how they have personally been affected by crime, so he could forward them on to the Alberta Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley.

Despite the Conservatives’ push for tough on crime laws, some which were created by the Stephen Harper government did not survive being challenged in Supreme Court.

And Harper’s tough-on-crime strategy was criticized by criminology experts because it was not evidence based.

Notably, a study by two Simon Fraser University psychologists, in the journal Canadian Psychology, stated early intervention, prevention and rehabilitation are more beneficial in reducing crime over the long-term, and would be more cost effective than incarceration.

In that article, Tough on Crime Reforms: What Psychology Has to Say about the Recent and Proposed Justice Policy in Canada (Sept. 2011), it said the Harper government’s reforms would disproportionally affect aboriginal people, those with mental illnesses and youth.

Even Texas conservatives rejected the idea of Harper’s tough on crime laws.

“We spent a lot of money, billions of dollars, building prisons, and housing prisoners, and it didn’t get us anywhere,” Judge John Creuzo of the Dallas County Court told CBC back in 2011 when Harper first proposed his party’s tough on crime strategy.

At the crime forum in Bonnyville, however, people expressed their frustration with a justice system that seems to only catch and release criminals.

Even so, Howrish maintained that the problems in the Lakeland were much larger than policing.

“It’s a community problem,” he said, reading a statement from Alberta’s provincial RCMP division. “A collaborative wrap-around approach, that includes citizens, health services, mental health service providers, law enforcement and community partners, must be leveraged to break the cycle that repeat offenders find themselves in.”

From the policing perspective, local police have been targeting drug dealers, Howrish said. Their latest work has resulted in 18 years of sentencing for drug traffickers.

Howrish said a handful of guys who have been arrested for selling drugs have all recently received some hefty sentences of two to five years each totalling the 18 years.

He said the public can expect even more drug dealers to go through the court system in the New Year.

“That 18 years is the tip of the iceberg,” said Howrish.

The RCMP also have a habitual offender management program, focusing on the community’s top 10 offenders—some of them who are on court-ordered curfews.

The police then regularly do curfew checks on them every night.

“If they’re not home, you go back and write up a warrant for their arrest . . . Your goal is to put them in jail as quickly as you can,” said Howrish.

“All of our members are well versed in who our repeat offenders are and what their methods of operation are,” said Parke, agreeing with Howrish. “We keep track of habitual offenders on a regular basis.